It's online-only, and you no option but to play on assorted servers with a few dozen others online. You can play without teaming up, but not in your own private world. Also, they've straight-up stated that going it alone is much, much harder than playing as part of a group, probably both because they've got monsters in the game that will require groups to take down, and because players WILL be coming to kill you and take all your stuff. There is no single-player campaign.

I guess you can at least ensure you and your friends play together when you're all online at the same time.

Apparently, your stuff is only there while you're online, but you still have to deal with a world where players can find nuke silos and actually drop a nuke right onto the base you've spent the last month building, so have fun with that.

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I loved Fallout. I wasn't too keen on Fallout 2 for some reason, perhaps because one of the earliest quests is overmatched for a low-level player. However, I have enjoyed Fallout:BOS (aka Fallout Tactics).

Then Fallout 3 came out and I was blown away by the incredible graphics that make it easy to imagine you are picking your way through a post-nuclear nightmare. It becomes easy to see why folks SHOULD fear nuclear war. Fallout New Vegas was really good too.

Then I got Fallout 4 and like it but it doesn't have the same impact as Fallout 3 did. Or at least, not to me it didn't. It is more like Sim City where you get to create these little isolated settlements and then have to run around like a chicken with your head cut off to defend them. Sure, there are four factions you can choose to work with or against, and there are some pretty nice quest lines, but the settlement building aspect of the game makes me have to rethink its intent and genre.

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Try the mod SimSettlements. With the most recent expansion, your settlements build and maintain themselves. They need a leader - by default, you can assign any of your companions, but there's another mod called Recruitable Settlers (EDIT: ACTUALLY, IT'S 'LEADERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH') that allows you to assign ANY named settler as a city leader.

It's a lot more immersive to see the city having grown while you were away, anyway, than it was when you were required to build every building, every plot of farmland, etc.

As long as your defense score is higher than the combined food, water, and power of the settlement, your chance of it getting attacked is very, very tiny. And there are mods out there that change those defense values - the one I use allows me to pick specific machine gun turrets rather than luck of the draw, and the stronger the turret, the higher its defense value. (An HMG turret firing standard .50 caliber ammunition should NOT have the same defense value as one firing armor-piercing, incendiary, or explosive rounds.)

The mods are available both on PC (via Nexus) and console (via Bethesda's online mod menu). If you use console, installing and configuring mods is handled automatically. If you use PC, get the Nexus Mod Manager and a program called LOOT (for Load Order Optimization Tool), and they handle it for you.

Modded games aren't eligible for achievements, but if you're on PC, there's a mod to fix that too.

Anyway, with a minor mod (adds a way to add and retrieve items specifically from your workshop) and the Wasteland Workshop DLC, I was able to build a full-on ammunition factory. I just toggle the ammunition type I want to make, set a counter for the number of ammo lots I want to produce, and the factory takes the appropriate scrap from a set of hoppers (and I can load more directly from the workshop if I need to), creates the amount and type of ammo I've requested, then moves any remaining components up to the correct hoppers for future use. Took me about 12 hours to build the bloody thing, but it sure beats having to scrounge up ammo.

***

As to Fallout 2, that initial 'coming of age' quest is a nightmare if you're going anything but a melee build, but it's certainly doable. Once you're past that, though, the game isn't any harder than the original.

***

Actually, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel were two different games. BOS was a console action RPG released in 2004, while Tactics was a real-time tactical game released for PC in 2001. As an RTT game, Tactics' focus was on the details of combat management and there was virtually no RPG aspect. Neither game, however, is considered canon (which is a good thing, considering the looming Robot Apocalypse and talking Deathclaws), although the whole 'Brotherhood splinter group travelled east' idea DID end up making it into FO3 and FO4. It's just a shame that the DC BOS went back to its xenophobic roots with a vengeance by the time of F04.

***

Although they're trying to implement some anti-griefing measures in FO76, the fact remains that some people aren't going to care, and one serious flaw in the SPECIAL system is that it has always allowed for the creation of ridiculously overpowered snipers. That's fine in single player, since someone who can one-shot a deathclaw or cazadore is going to get murdered but good if he misses, but people are NOT going to be happy to be wandering through the wasteland and suddenly be looking at their corpse while someone named xXx Pu$$yR3cK3R69 xXx runs up to teabag them for ten minutes, all while the 13 year-old behind the character screams into voice chat about how much you and your mother suck. (That kind of crap is why I've pretty much stopped playing Overwatch, despite being a passable Lucio player. I think you can guess how well I react to a match full of that kind of idiot.)

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Last edited by Frothingslosh; 06-25-2018 at 03:01 PM.
Reason: One of these days I'll not need to edit a big post!

Also, for settlement defense, each settlement has 2-4 points where attackers will spawn from. If you can find out where they are (either from experience or using a mod like City Manager), you can build a tower with just a TON of HMG, Laser, and Missile turrets, and the bad guys will never get a chance to attack your base. If you had access to my Facebook page, you could see a couple examples. Let's just say that when they open up, it looks like a full on military strike lands on them.

I would, however, recommend against using missile turrets and the machine gun version (I think it's Mk VII) that fires explosive ammunition, if those turrets are aimed INSIDE your settlement. Not unless you LIKE repairing half of the settlement, anyway.

And you'll want some pointed inward, either to cover internal spawn points or to assist against synth infiltrators.

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The_Doc_Man, if you've played the first two Bioshocks, you must play Infinite! It definitely ties into the first two, even though it doesn't seem like it at first. You'll want to play the DLC for it as well to get the full picture of how everything ties together. IMO, they did a great job closing any gaps in the story between all three games with this one.

In fact, I opened up my Fallout 4 album to the public, so you can see the defense about halfway through HERE.

Also, for anyone who knows: I've seen a couple people attach a photo to a post and have it show up IN the post as a result. How the blazes do you do that? I can only include one in the post itself if I have it hosted on the web someplace.

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In fact, I opened up my Fallout 4 album to the public, so you can see the defense about halfway through HERE.

Also, for anyone who knows: I've seen a couple people attach a photo to a post and have it show up IN the post as a result. How the blazes do you do that? I can only include one in the post itself if I have it hosted on the web someplace.

By copying the address of the uploaded attachment? (Serious question. I've never tried, but I just linked to your profile pic.)

EDIT: Yep, that's how it's done. They copy/paste the address of the image after attaching and insert it into [IMG][/IMG] tags.

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Re: Elder Scrolls Online

@ Frothingslosh,

I've had waaay to many cases of "Stupid kids" making multi-player games less than enjoyable for me. I put it in quotes as the "kids" part is relevant to their emotional age, not physical.

@ Doc,

I really, really, really enjoy the fallout series, mostly as they do a very good job at keeping a specific immersive aspect; items that make no sense out of context but make perfect sense in game. It always puts a smile on my face when I find those little gems floating around that are strange but so very "Fallout", such as the skeletons holding hands on the park bench watching where you find a crater from a first strike.